Girls Just Wanna Have Fun [Pt. I]

By Sailee Dadarkar

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Somewhere between Bollywood playback and bhajans, a new sound emerged, one that didn’t wait for the film industry’s permission. It was bold, non-conformist, and often helmed by women. 

This is the story of Indian pop girls who carved a niche outside the film music, industrial complex, giving birth to a distinct genre: Indiepop. 

The Pioneers (1970s–Early 1980s).

Long before MTV and Magnasound, we had Usha Uthup, who redefined what it meant to be a singer in India. She wasn’t born in a recording studio, she cut her teeth in the nightclubs of Calcutta and Bombay, wearing her signature Kanjeevarams while belting out jazz standards and pop hits. Her voice, a deep contralto rarely heard in Indian mainstream music, became her power. Her setlists were genre-bending: she would sing ‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles, followed by a Tamil folk tune. That juxtaposition, the global and the local, is what would later define Indiepop.

Her collaborations with Bappi Lahiri in the early '80s, most notably the cult-classic ‘Hari Om Hari’ from Pyaara Dushman (1981), infused disco beats with Sanskrit chants. This wasn’t fusion for novelty’s sake; it was a genuine reflection of India’s multiculturalism.She is often referred to as the ‘original pop diva,’ even if her music wasn’t always categorized as such.

She sang in over 17 Indian languages and several foreign ones; and this ability to traverse genres, cabaret, bhajan, pop, disco, set the tone for the next generation of female artists.

Uthup didn’t conform to the image of a young, glamorized pop diva. She was middle-aged, traditionally dressed, and a cultural force. In a country where women were often typecast into either playback singers or spiritual crooners, Uthup carved out a third space, one where you could be cosmopolitan, Indian, and female.

Alongside, existing in a country obsessed with Hindi cinema, Sharon Prabhakar dared to release albums entirely in English. A theatre actor turned singer, she came into the spotlight in the late 70’s and early 80’s with albums like Feeling Good, This Is Me, and her eponymous Sharon Prabhakar (1982).

Prabhakar’s music was heavily influenced by Western pop, new wave, and soft rock. Think Madonna meets Carole King, but with an Indian accent. Songs like ‘Feelings’ and ‘My Heart Belongs to Me’ found airplay on All India Radio and niche Doordarshan segments, bringing an urban chic sensibility to Indian pop long before the term ‘Indie’ was fashionable.

Her visual style, short hair, stylish pantsuits, and dramatic makeup, made her a fashion icon. Prabhakar was also one of the few pop artists to actively engage with feminist causes in her lyrics and appearances.

Despite lacking mainstream chart success, she was important for establishing a precedent: Indian women could be singer-songwriters, not just playback voices.

And now, a storm was about to hit the Indian sub-continent in the eighties.

The Nazia-Biddu Revolution (Early–Mid 1980’s).

In 1980, a sweet-voiced 15-year-old Pakistani girl named Nazia Hassan did something extraordinary: she sang ‘Aap Jaisa Koi’ for the Bollywood film Qurbani. The track, composed by British-Indian producer Biddu, was revolutionary. It wasn’t just a hit; it was a cultural shift. The sound was slick, synthetic, and unapologetically disco. The voice was girlish, effortless, and modern. It didn’t sound like Lata or Asha, it sounded like now.

That song turned Hassan into a star overnight, but it was only the beginning. 

In 1981, Nazia and her brother Zoheb Hassan released their debut album ‘Disco Deewane’, again produced by Biddu. What happened next was unprecedented. The album sold over 60 million copies globally, making it one of the best-selling Asian pop records of all time. It charted in 14 countries, from Brazil to Russia. It outsold ABBA in India that year. Let that sink in.

What she did, without really trying, was de-center Bollywood. Her songs were not tied to a storyline, a character, or a playback sequence. They existed for their own sake, and more importantly, on their own terms. She was one of the first South Asian women to become a pop artist, not just a singer.

Hassan’s image was just as carefully curated. She wore modest clothing, projected a girl-next-door persona, and rarely performed in spaces that felt too provocative or ‘western’. Yet, paradoxically, she was the face of modernity. Her concerts were packed with screaming teenagers, and her TV appearances caused viewership spikes on both sides of the Indo-Pak border.

She was one of the first South Asian women whose music was played in discos, cars, living rooms, and stadiums, outside the context of cinema or marriage.

One of the reasons her music traveled so well across borders was its lack of overt nationalism. 

She wasn’t tied to Indian or Pakistani identity in a strict sense. Her appeal was global, and her aesthetics, pastel album covers, roller-skates, neon lights, were straight out of an MTV dream. She was what urban teens in Bombay, Karachi, and Kuala Lumpur aspired to be.

This global appeal was made even more extraordinary by the fact that she rarely performed live after her initial fame. She focused on her education, worked with the UN, and ultimately retired from music in the early '90’s to focus on humanitarian work. She died tragically young at 35 due to cancer, but her legacy continues to reverberate.

Today, snippets of ‘Disco Deewane’ and ‘Boom Boom’ appear in films, DJ remixes, and even global hits. 

Most famously, ‘Disco Deewane’ was sampled in Karan Johar’s Student of the Year (2012) for the track ‘The Disco Song,’ introducing a new generation to her sound. The original vocals were retained, a rare gesture of respect in an era of excessive remixing.

Hassan’s biggest legacy was proving that a teenage girl could dominate charts without Bollywood. 

She kicked open the door that later artists like Alisha Chinai, Suneeta Rao, and even Ananya Birla would walk through. Her music made space for joy, femininity, and independence in a musical culture that often demanded subservience or melodrama from its women.

She also showed producers and labels that there was a market for this kind of sound. Without Nazia-Biddu, there would be no Magnasound, no Channel V Popstars, no MTV India in the form we knew it in the ‘90s.

The MTV Generation: Indiepop Queens of the 1990s.

If the 80’s cracked open the pop door in India, the 90’s flung it wide open, and Alisha Chinai was standing right at the centre of the spotlight. 

With India's economic liberalisation in 1991 and the arrival of satellite television, a new kind of woman emerged on the screen: confident, experimental, and fully in control of her sound and image. 

These weren’t playback singers waiting for a director’s cue. 

These were the pop queens of liberalised India.

Chinai, who had already made a name for herself in playback (think ‘Kajra Re’ long before the Aishwarya Rai hit), dropped Made in India with Pakistani-British producer Biddu, yes, the same Biddu behind Hassan’s success.

The result was an album that became an anthem for a generation raised on cable TV and newly globalised ambitions. The title track, ‘Made in India,’ featured model Milind Soman as a romanticized Indian hero in a video that parodied Western exotification. Chinai’s assertive delivery, Don’t want a man from USA, reversed the gaze, reclaiming Indian identity and desirability on her own terms.

The album sold over five million copies, making it one of the highest-selling Indian pop albums of all time. It also sparked a debate: was this feminist or faux nationalism? Either way, she became the face of a movement. She had been around since the early 80’s, experimenting with disco and synth-pop, but this was different. 

Made in India was an act of pure pop stardom.

Chinai’s career arc was a mirror of the 90’s pop scene. She pivoted between Bollywood and non-film albums, balancing mainstream appeal with independent image-making. Unlike playback singers who were invisible voices behind heroines, she was the heroine, on album covers, in videos, and on magazine shoots.

Hot on Chinai’s wheels was Suneeta Rao, whose 1991 track ‘Paree Hoon Main’ introduced a softer, poetic side of Indiepop. With a breathy voice and understated charm, Rao wasn’t trying to dominate; she was inviting you into her world. ‘Paree Hoon Main’ became a sleeper hit on MTV India, Channel V, and Doordarshan, making her one of the few women to bridge multiple viewing audiences.

Her subsequent work, particularly the album Dhuan (1999), tackled themes like self-love, heartbreak, and feminine resilience with catchy, danceable beats. Rao was also one of the first Indian pop stars to openly discuss women’s rights in interviews and public appearances. Her visuals were minimal compared to Chinai’s glam, but her storytelling, especially in videos like ‘Kesariya’ was nuanced, drawing from Indian mythology and modern angst in equal measure.

While Chinai brought desi glam and Rao gave us dreamlike poetry, Shweta Shetty exploded onto the scene with the physicality of a rock star. Her 1993 album Johnny Joker was bold, percussive, and influenced by Euro-house beats. But it was the 1998 banger ‘Deewane To Deewane Hain’ that made her a household name.

Shetty’s deep voice, sculpted figure, and kinetic choreography stood out in an industry still unsure how to handle sexually autonomous women. She wasn’t shy, she was a performer. And she wore her German-Indian heritage proudly, drawing from both Euro disco and Indian raag-inspired phrasing. She was unapologetically modern in a moment when the country was still negotiating the boundaries of tradition and progress. Her version of pop didn’t look to Bollywood for validation, and that was revolutionary.

Her videos were often set in urban spaces, nightclubs, rooftops, streets, rather than exoticised palaces or spiritual ashrams. She embodied the new Indian girl of the MTV era: mobile, fearless, and a little bit wild.

No discussion of 90s Indiepop would be complete without mentioning the role of satellite TV and music labels. MTV India and Channel V weren’t just broadcasting pop, they were curating a visual and sonic identity for the post-liberalisation Indian youth. These were the years of Quick Gun Murugun, Oye MTV, and countdown shows that actually dictated what people talked about in schools and colleges.

Pop singers like Alisha Chinai, Suneeta Rao, and Shweta Shetty didn’t just sing, they starred in music videos, interviews, ad campaigns, and award shows. For the first time, India had pop celebrities outside of the cinema. Labels like Magnasound, Archies Music, and BMG Crescendo invested in these women, marketing them as brands rather than just voices.

This was the moment when Indian women’s music became a lifestyle category. These artists defined not just the sound but the look of the 90’s Indian girl: short crop tops, bindis with jeans, Doc Martens with saris, loud lipstick, and visible agency.

This era also saw a slew of female artists who might not have reached Chinai’s or Shetty’s stardom but significantly enriched the scene. Mehnaz’s ‘Miss India’ poked fun at beauty standards with biting satire. Anaida, with her Persian-Indian background, brought a unique accent and styling to her hits like ‘Oova Oova’. Colonial Cousins collaborator Sunita Rao leaned heavily on fusion sounds, while Lucky Ali’s sister Yasmin Ali experimented with moody folk-pop.

Each of them contributed to the expanding vocabulary of what Indian pop could be, regional, diasporic, political, sensual, humorous. There was no one-size-fits-all formula, which made this moment incredibly diverse.

The 1990s were crucial not just because of great music, but because of what that music allowed. These artists opened up space for Indian women to occupy the stage as lead performers, not just background voices. They created a space where desi femininity could be fashionable, controversial, and fiercely independent.

These pop stars didn’t exist in the shadow of heroes or heroines. They were the main characters. 

But with a new millennium around the corner, a new set of stars began to crawl up to the surface.